Dan Rather: Trump Wants to ‘Annihilate’ the Truth to Move America into ‘Post-Truth Political Era’

Legendary newsman Dan Rather spoke with CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday to discuss President Donald Trump‘s most recent attacks on the media and the truth, including his advice in front of a group of veterans to not believe what you are seeing and reading.

“Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” Trump said at a speech in Kansas City on Tuesday. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Rather started out by stressing just how important the truth is.

“Truth is the currency of democracy. Without truth you don’t have open government, an informed electorate, you don’t have a democracy. You don’t have a constitutional republic based on the principle of democracy,” Rather told Lemon. “You just can’t do it. That’s central.”

Then, referring to Trump’s remarks to veterans, Rather said this:

It’s straight out of Orwell. Orwell, what he wrote it’s practically a shooting script for Donald Trump. I’m not suggesting that Donald Trump read it. The evidence is he doesn’t read very much… The point being here, there is a method to this, and the method is to convince people that the only truth is the truth that comes from me, the ultimate power…And he has made some way in that — as several people have said before me he’s not just attacking the truths, he wants to annihilate the truth. He wants to move us completely into the post-truth political era in which there’s no such thing as objective facts.

He continued on by saying that he thinks the Mueller probe and what is happening with Michael Cohen has made Trump more desperate and more willing to take more risks.

As Trump “gets more desperate he takes bigger risks in telling bigger lies or more often telling lies, and telling people, look, don’t believe what you read or see anywhere else, just come to me. I have the ultimate truth, I am the way,” Rather explained.